Hands at Mass
London: Chapman and Hall, 1951. First edition. Thin quarto (10 inches tall), original cream linen cloth, gilt titles to spine and front board. Very gentle edge-wear to top of front board, faint offsetting to free endpapers. A clean and sharp-cornered copy. Item #281
"SO WE MAY SAY IN A TRUE SENSE THAT THE PRIEST'S HANDS ARE GOD'S HANDS"
First edition of Walter Nurnberg and C.C. Martindale's collaborative study of the drama of Sacrifice of the Mass, featuring 17 arresting black-and-white photographic plates.
With a short Preface (dated "London, February, 1951) by the German photographer Nurnberg: "I present this book, therefore, not with the pride of the craftsman, but with the humility befitting the subject. There is no room for the irrelevant or the ornate. Simplicity alone can tell this story—a story not of worldly toil, but of our offering to God." The Anamnesis of the Roman Canon is printed on the leaf preceding the photographs. The images are captioned in Latin and described in the lengthy Introduction by C.C. Martindale, a Catholic convert and one of the notable English Jesuits. At Oxford's Campion Hall, Father Martindale "dazzled and stimulated the most various undergraduates by his restless zeal, incisive diction, and by his modernity" (Evelyn Waugh). This copy without the scarce original dust jacket. Approbations.
Price: $50.00